Albert Kalthoff was a GermanProtestant theologian, who along with :de:Emil Felden|Emil Felden, :de:Oscar Mauritz|Oscar Mauritz, :de:Moritz Schwalb|Moritz Schwalb and :de:Friedrich Steudel|Friedrich Steudel formed a group in Bremen, named the :de:Deutscher Monistenbund|Deutscher Monistenbund, who no longer believed in Jesus as a historical figure.
Biography
Kalthoff criticized what he regarded as the romanticist and sentimental image of Jesus as a "great personality" of history developed by German liberal theologians, including Albert Schweitzer who noted Kalthoff in his work The Quest of the Historical Jesus. In Kalthoff's views, it was the early church that created the New Testament, not the reverse; the early Jesus movement was socialist, expecting a social reform and a better world, which was combined with the Jewish apocalypticbelief in a Messiah. Kalthoff saw Christianity as a social psychosis. Arthur Drews was influenced by Kalthoff. Bruno Bauer was the first academic theologian posit the ahistoricity of Jesus. However his scholarship was buried by German academia, and he remained a pariah, until Albert Kalthoff rescued his works from neglect and obscurity. Kalthoff revived Bruno Bauer's Christ Myth thesis in his Das Christus-Problem. Grundlinien zu einer Sozialtheologie and Die Entstehung des Christentums, Neue Beiträge zum Christusproblem.
Quotes
1904: "Was There An Historical Jesus?", How Christianity arose: New contributions to the Christ-problem
A Son of God, Lord of the World, born of a virgin, and rising again after death, and the son of a small builder with revolutionary notions, are two totally different beings. If one was the historical Jesus, the other certainly was not. The real question of the historicity of Jesus is not merely whether there ever was a Jesus among the numerous claimants of a Messiahship in Judea, but whether we are to recognise the historical character of this Jesus in the Gospels, and whether he is to be regarded as the founder of Christianity.
Works
Das Leben Jesu. Reden gehalten im protestantischen Reform-Verein zu Berlin, Berlin 1880.
Das Christus-Problem. Grundlinien zu einer Sozialtheologie, Leipzig 1902.
Die Entstehung des Christentums. Neue Beiträge zum Christusproblem, Leipzig 1904. transl. 1907.
Was wissen wir von Jesus? Eine Abrechnung mit W. Bousset, Berlin 1904.
